“Oh my…wow…” I said inelegantly, robbed of all higher thought.

  Eve gave me a quick turn, “You like?”

  I nodded dumbly, unable to string a proper sentence together. Eve was wearing a black evening gown made of that futuristic silk that shimmered in the light; it wrapped around her neck and fit her impossible curves around her breasts and tight stomach, her hips and ass and even her thighs before flaring out with a slit at her upper thigh. The dress also left her back completely bare, showing off her perfect white skin. Her hair was done up in a stylish bun that showed off her pointed ears with some platinum and crystal binding, but she let her tentacles down freely—which weirdly made it even more attractive. Eve didn’t need makeup, her lips and the area all around her eyes were naturally black, but she did add some jewelry, wearing a platinum and crystal necklace, with a plain platinum bangle on her left wrist. Her nails were black as always, but they somehow looked a little longer, more feminine—imitating some style I’d never be able to guess. She also wore black stiletto heels, the fancy kind that left most of her feet bare with straps that rode up her calf, with a pair of thin platinum bangles on her right ankle. She also had a little black silk purse, something to match the rest of the dress.

  On the other hand, I felt completely underdressed; I was wearing a nice black zip-sports coat with a grey tunic and fancy silk pants. I was dressed okay for a date, while Eve was absolutely stunning and looked like she would be the center of attention at some grand ball.

  Eve trilled a little giggle and leaned up to straighten my collar—I could never get the future-tech collars right, “Oh stop, you look really handsome.”

  “And you’re absolutely breathtaking.”

  Eve looked up at me with those beautiful glowing yellow eyes and she bit her lip in that cute way, “You know, I might be the spawn of some impossibly ancient Outsider god with the power to destroy planets, but I’m still just a girl.” She leaned up and kissed my cheek, “And I’ll always appreciate those compliments from you.”

  I smirked, “Had to throw in the Outsider god bit? Couldn’t just thank me like a normal girl?”

  She rolled her eyes, and her smile was brilliant, “We’re both far from normal, remember?”

  Eve took my arm in that regal way, but we quickly shifted to holding hands as I escorted her downstairs. We’d gone out a couple times before to hang out, casual things you could probably call a date, but we decided since this was our first official date, we wanted to get fancy. We already planned the whole night out together; we’d be taking some special car service that would take a tour through the historical section of the capital on our way to see the circus-opera—that’s right, Entana combined their circuses and their operas, and it was apparently a high-society kind of affair. Afterwards, we’d be going to the fanciest restaurant in the capital, the kind you’d normally need to place reservations for cycles in advance—but thanks to a clandestine agent friend of mine, we were able to get hacked onto the guestlist.

  Out front the car was waiting for us, but calling it a car was obviously quite the stretch; it was a hovercraft vehicle that looked like a sleek mix between a giant bullet and an old 50s car back on earth. It was all black outside with a white plush interior, and the driver was in the center up front, dressed in a fancy jumpsuit tuxedo. He was a rather plain kind of alien, some blue furry man with spiraling horns on top of his head.

  “Party for Adam?” He called out regally when he saw us.

  We confirmed our reservation and got into the open-air backseat, and it seemed more like the booth at some lounge rather than the back of a car. It was lower than you’d think so you couldn’t see much unless it was above us, but there were view-screens in front and to the sides that displayed the scenery around us.

  “Champagne and appetizers are provided.” The driver called, and some small server-bot brought out a bottle and some glasses along with some fancy tray of blue meats and red cheese. “Ready to depart?” We confirmed we were, and a shimmer went over our heads like a forcefield, and suddenly the air around us seemed to diminish—we could still feel fresh air, but it was like we were being protected from the cold and wind.

  As the hover-car lifted into the air, we barely felt it with how smooth the ride was. Eve leaned back with me in the booth, draping one leg over my lap as she poured me a glass of champagne.

  “You know this is the fanciest thing I’ve ever done? My dates back home usually involved the Zoo, Dave & Busters, sometimes mini-golf or bowling, and very frequently Denny’s.” I admitted, taking the glass Eve offered.

  Eve smiled as she poured her own drink, “Would it surprise you to hear this is the fanciest date I’ve ever been on too?” She smiled mischievously and took a small sip of champagne, “We didn’t get out much back on NX-947b after all.”

  I picked up the tray of meat and cheese and offered some to Eve, “I know I don’t think of it much since you seem like a whole adult person, but you haven’t actually lived much, so it has me curious what all you really want to do—where you want to go, what you want to experience.” I admitted.

  Eve took a piece of meat and cheese each, then paused as she thought it over, “I know you’ll probably hate this as an answer, but I really just want to enjoy spending time with you.”

  I waved my champagne glass around, “Right, but you’ve gotta have something in mind what you want to do with me.”

  Eve’s smile turned flirtatious, and I didn’t need to have an extra-sense to know what she was thinking.

  “Besides that.”

  Eve giggled to herself, “Honestly? I want to do everything with you, and I don’t think you understand we’ll have time for it. We can go back to earth and live as farmers, we could join up as mercenaries on some far away planet, we could live like lazy rich people on a perpetual vacation, we could try any day job or craft, complete any random art project you fancy. I want to do it all—I want to live a thousand lifetimes with you, across the stars and in another galaxy, we can do anything we want.” She leaned into me, nuzzling her head into my shoulder, “So long as we’re together, I want to do it all.”

  ***

  The tour around the city was nice, though we ended up not paying much attention to it. Eve started feeding me by hand, which was cute and sweet at first, but then we started tossing the food at each other, trying for trick shots across the backseat and having no small amount of immature fun with it.

  The tour ended before the circus-opera house with Eve and I cackling like a couple of dumb kids, and the driver looked at us with a haughty expression like he’d just discovered we didn’t actually belong anywhere so fancy.

  We made our way towards our seats on the upper balcony where we’d have a great view of all the action. Everyone around us was dressed exquisitely too, with all sorts of futuristic suits and tuxedos, and every manner of dress or gown I could ever imagine. Eve was by far the most beautiful person there, turning heads everywhere she went. It was wild to see so many aliens look after Eve, like people you wouldn’t think would even be biologically compatible. There was one guy that looked like an anthropomorphic slug, and his eyestalks twisted around so he could keep gawking at Eve—his wife struck him in the head with her purse when she noticed.

  I couldn’t help but feel a flash of jealousy at all these people staring at my Evie, and I instinctively pulled Eve a little closer towards me. Eve just chuckled to herself but didn’t say anything, instead she wrapped a couple hair tentacles around my arm and draped another across my shoulders.

  We made it to our seats just in time for the start of the show as a hush of excited energy rolled through the crowd. Now, I’d been to the circus before back on earth, but I didn’t know much about operas. This was some wild combination of acrobatics, theatrics, and operatic singing. It wasn’t a Bozo the clown kind of circus, it was antigravity somersaults and flying through the air, light manipulation and crazy pyrotechnics. The players seemed to be dressed like clowns but strange alien versions of them, all monochromatic, looking like angels and demons. There wasn’t so much as an overarching story, just individual songs to accompany the circus performances. During the grand finale, there was a great ball of fire that caged all the demon clowns while the angel clowns sang of victory, pressing the fireball into itself until it imploded at the crescendo of the song, and when all the lights returned the demon clowns had been vanquished—disappeared from the stage in some amazing magic trick.

  The audience cheered excitedly, and everyone stood to applaud the clowns for their amazing performance, and just like a show back on earth all the performers took to the stage for one final bow.

  Eve and I left the circus-opera house holding hands, her trilling with excitement over the show.

  “Which song was your favorite?”

  “The grand finale, duh, the huge fireball was so badass.”

  Eve rolled her eyes, “Such a boy answer.” She smiled, “I liked the forbidden love-song between the young angel and demon clown.”

  I rolled my eyes too, “Such a girl answer.”

  She swatted at me and giggled, then started singing fake opera at me with her musical trilling—the gibberish language she used back in her earlier forms.

  “Hey, that’s actually really pretty.”

  Eve’s eyes twinkled with amusement, “You like it?”

  I nodded, “Yeah, I always liked your musical nonsense language. Where does it come from anyways?”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Eve shrugged, “Primitive Predazoan sounds, no different from a dog barking or cat meowing; there isn’t much meaning to them other than the feelings I put into it.”

  I chuckled and shook my head, “Well you definitely used to put a lot of feeling into those little trills.”

  Eve made a pouty face and made some nonsense trilling sound like she was scolding me. It was a little different now in her adult form, it sounded more elegant maybe—not as childish or animalistic. It was almost like some kind of ethereal song. But it was silly to do in the middle of the street.

  I pulled her into a hug and covered her mouth, “Alright, I get it. No more scolding now little Evie, sheesh.”

  Eve giggled into a sigh and pulled my hand down, then leaned her back against me and I wrapped my arms around her, “I love it when you call me Evie.”

  “Really? More than Eve?”

  Eve nodded, “Yeah, it’s my own special nickname you gave me.” She leaned her head back to look up at me, “Gramps named me Eve, and of course I like the name a lot, but you’re the one who called me Evie first—you’re the only one I want to call me Evie.”

  I always considered little Evie to be the cute alien I’d found on earth, and when Eve changed into her true form, I stopped calling her Evie for a while, like I’d considered them two separate beings—I’d even said I missed my little Evie when talking to Eve. But now I knew they were all the same person—Eve, Evie, even Alpha-03. I’d come to understand how complex Eve was as a person—such a multifaceted being. There was no separation between Eve and Evie now, so here I was with my little Evie once again.

  I leaned down to kiss the top of her head, “Okay, Evie it is.”

  Eve trilled in that happy musical way of hers, and she just about melted into my arms.

  We hailed a hover-cab to take us to the restaurant, and it turned out we were actually a half-hour early, so we still had to wait around for the table. I spent most of the time explaining clowns on earth and how it was one of the most ridiculous phobias; I was in the middle of discussing the lore on Pennywise the Clown when the host was finally able to seat us.

  The restaurant was fancy in a strangely archaic way; while everything around us had been so futuristic, the restaurant looked more like something out of a history book on ancient Rome. Everything was white marble, with latticework and blue vines freely growing on the walls and even the ceilings. There was a four-man band up on a small stage, with instruments that looked more like hookah pipes; the music was soothing but strangely spun around in circles, hard to follow the rhythm. The host walked us around a center gazebo that had some chef working on a massive grill with a huge slab of meat and led us to our table at the upper floor of the restaurant. Same as all the other Entana restaurants, they had to scan us to unlock their menus, but I found them much more limited than pretty much anywhere else.

  “Not many options for mammalian races it seems…” I muttered to myself.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s limited for everyone; small menu, exclusive clientele, massive waitlist, you know drill.” Eve said offhandedly.

  Despite the small menu, the food we ordered was absolutely amazing. I got some classic meat platter while Eve tried a seafood dish, and we sampled each other’s meal and agreed there was a reason the place was so highly desired. I wasn’t even much of a wine guy, but they had a perfect pairing that complimented the food amazingly. It was all wildly satisfying with generous portions unlike on earth how you’d get a single slice of meat and a green bean at some five-star restaurant for the cost of a downpayment on a car.

  “I have to say, I have been loving this alien planet so far, and if more Imperial worlds are like this, I don’t even know why we’d want to go back and visit earth.” I admitted.

  Eve tilted her head to the side, “You think so?”

  I nodded enthusiastically, “Yeah, I mean you didn’t even get to experience much of earth outside our little country house, but it’s not that great. The politicians are crooked, the rich hoard all the wealth, everyone is fucking greedy, and everyone hates each other for all the wrong reasons; it was all just kinda shitty.” I gestured to the area around us, “Here there’s peaceful diversity, no desperate greed, no downtrodden masses—I haven’t even seen a single homeless person so far, so I’m just gonna assume they solved that issue.”

  “What about Gramps and Gram? What about all the earth entertainment?”

  I sighed, “Yeah, okay I do miss Gramps and Gram, but those are people, not earth itself. And we have earth entertainment up on The Radiance now, so we definitely don’t need to go back for that now. Do you miss it?”

  Eve shrugged, “I told you before I’d be fine living on some remote planetoid so long as we were together, but earth holds a special place in my heart because it’s where I met you.”

  I shook my head and chuckled to myself, “You know it’s almost unbelievable you wound up on earth, at my farm, just as I was out in the woods that night. I mean imagine if literally anything else changed that night, we might not have ever even met. You could’ve wound up on the other side of earth on some Chinese guy’s farm instead—or maybe just snatched up by the earth government before anyone else found you. Hell, chances are you could’ve just missed earth entirely and ended up on some alien planet in another galaxy.”

  Eve was silent for a few moments, poking at the last of her food with her utensil.

  “What?”

  Eve looked up at me, her eyes showing concern, “Promise you’ll trust me?”

  That wasn’t anything I expected to hear during lighthearted dinner banter, “Eve what the hell’s going on?”

  Eve took in a deep breath, then let it out slowly, “I sought you out Adam. For my supremacy drive, I came to earth to find you. Nothing was by chance; our meeting was inevitable.”

  “Inevitable, what like it was predetermined—like fate?”

  Eve shook her head, “No, and this is going to be so, so hard for you to understand.” She put her napkin on the table and spread it out, “Okay, you know how warp channels work? An entrance and an exit.” She gestured to the two far corners of the napkin, then trailed her finger between the two points, “Then we travel through void space, which is essentially an extra/outer-dimension where time is dilated?”

  “Yeah?”

  Eve nodded then placed her utensil on the napkin, “While in void space, time isn’t just dilated, it’s all happening at once; past present and future are all there. Going through void space is fine in a shielded vessel so you won’t feel the effects of that congealed time—that’s why ships can only stay in void space so long, the shields eventually wear down. Normally, living organisms can’t survive in void space without shielding, but obviously Predazoans—the Outsiders are different.”

  “Right, Prime-00 opened up a warp channel and sent you all through somewhere across the empire, you told me all this.”

  Eve shook her head, “No, Prime-00 just opened the channels and pushed us into void space; we all had to find and make our own exits.”

  My eyebrows shot up, “You could make your own exit gate?”

  Eve waved it off, “Easier to exit void space than to enter it.” She pointed back down to her utensil, “Point is, when I was in void space, my time was all congealed together; I could sense my past, present and future all at once, and part of that lead me to choosing my exit destination. Basically, I saw my future perfection and knew where to go for the sake of my supremacy drive—I believe that’s how all my sisters chose their exit gates, following the path to their future perfect selves.”

  I felt like I was about to get a headache, “So…” I closed my eyes and put a hand to my forehead, “You saw a future where you were in your perfect form, knowing I was your beacon to perfection, which is why you chose to make an exit channel by earth—why you crashed down right in the woods around my house.” I looked at Eve, “Are you being for real?”

  Eve nodded, her expression worried, “Yes. Are you freaking out?” She asked, concern coloring her voice.

  I let out a deep sigh, “I mean it’s a lot to take in. Then, what, you’ve seen all our future together, you know everything that’s going to happen to us, and we’re just supposed to follow along, no choice in the matter?”

  Eve shook her head quickly, leaning forward to hold my hand in hers, “No Adam, it’s not like that at all. I didn’t see the future like some premonition; I just had a sense of my…destination—like a snapshot. And with my mind in its primitive state, there wasn’t much all I could decipher from what I sensed.” She stroked the back of my hand with her thumb, “I just saw you, like a shining beacon pulling me towards you.”

  Well, at least we didn’t have to freak out over some existential freewill conversation—predetermined timelines and fate and all that shit. It was still pretty hard to understand—kind of hard to believe. “But what would’ve happened if I’d been born 10 years earlier, what if you’d been created a hundred years later?”

  Eve shrugged, “Honestly? In that way we either had some miraculous stroke of cosmic luck, or in the dilated time of void space, maybe I would have exited the warp gate in some different time altogether.” She gestured down to the utensil on her napkin, pointing at one end, “The point is, I entered void space from this side of time.” She trailed her finger along to the other side of the utensil, “But I had a vague sense of what happened over here at another point in time; nothing so fantastical as a vision like you might think, but instinct pulled me towards the planet where I would end up in my perfect form from what I could sense—to you.”

  This was beyond anything I would’ve thought possible, like some time-travel plot that never worked right in the movies. But Eve hadn’t actually travelled through time, she just got some instinctual pull towards her destination in void space as her timeline got all muddled together. But what all did she sense back in void space, what all could she remember now, “Is that why you were so adamant on us being together? You knew we were—I don’t know what other word to use here—destined to be together? Why you tried to take away my freedom, why you told me I could never be with anyone else?”

  Eve leaned back in her chair, looking down at her lap, “Imagine you found a polaroid of a beautiful woman you’d never met, and on the back was written this was to be your future wife—your soulmate. At first you’d probably be skeptical, but now imagine you finally meet this woman, and instantly you fall in love with her; you feel it—you know it in your soul this is your perfect match, the only woman you’ll ever want, the only woman you’ll ever love.”

  Of course I would be skeptical at first, finding some random magical polaroid, but upon meeting the person and being overwhelmed by those feelings, I don’t even know what I’d do. I wouldn’t kidnap the woman—hold her as my hostage until she learned to love me back, but how far would I be willing to go to be with her? Is that what Eve had been dealing with all this time? “Is that how it was for you?”

  Eve nodded, a small smirk playing on her face, “That’s probably the best analogy I can give you for what I sensed and what I felt for you; given some strange snapshot of my future mate, and then I crashed down on earth, and he was everything I could’ve wanted—more than I ever dreamed.”

  I was silent for a time as I thought over Eve’s confession, remembering how desperate she was to be with me—how obsessed she was. I remembered back when I almost hooked up with Tillia and how much she fought to stop us, how she even freaked out back on The Radiance.

  “Imagine you had that polaroid, felt all that love in your heart for the woman, only to find out she had a boyfriend.” Eve said flatly—clearly sensing my thoughts.

  I looked up with a small smile playing on my lips, “So that’s where all that talk about knowing what’s best for me came from? You literally knew the future and wanted to keep us on the right path so we’d end up together.”

  Eve rolled her eyes, “Enough with the knowing the future and destiny talk, it’s nothing so grand as that.” She smiled, “I just felt your heart across space and time, and it called to me—made me come find you.”

  And it all finally made sense; it wasn’t just some fabricated personality that made Eve love me, she always loved me—she always will love me. It wasn’t about being a Predazoan—wasn’t even about being a human, it was just about being in love and Eve’s desire to nurture and protect that love.

  There was so much I didn’t understand about Eve, so much that was beyond my dull human mind. It wasn’t a simple line we could cross; it would be an endless chasm we could never return from. It was terrifying and intimidating, but also thrilling and exciting, the idea of falling together into such a deep, obsessive love. It wasn’t a simple decision to make, and there was still a small part of me that resisted because I knew what would happen once we submitted to each other. But there was no denying it any longer; I was as in love with Eve as she was with me, and despite how scary it was to think of opening myself up to her so completely, I knew without a doubt—beyond time and space and everything in between—my wonderful, beautiful, perfect Evie was my soulmate.