A severe lack of loneliness








Well, sooner or later one has to face the facts. By now I could see what all this was pointing at. It was an unlikely explanation, but then, as Sherlock once said, once you get rid of the entirely impossible, what's left is bound to be very boring (Or something to that effect - I always had trouble following his thinking. For god's sake, it was just a hat.)

But I couldn't do anything about it, not while all those people were around me. I mean, Weird is Cool, but one has to draw the line somewhere between cool weirdness and official insanity, and talking a being nobody else around you can see, in company, is just this much the wrong side of that line. So I waited.

And waited some more. One of the most annoying things about the army in general, and the Space Force in particular, is the utter and complete lack of privacy. The only time you can be alone is while taking a crap, and that only if you ignore the constant banging on the door and people shouting at you to hurry things up a bit, there are other people in this ship.








 
So it happened that I didn't have any time to face the problems at hand until I was actually sent home for the weekend. In the meantime, my grey army socks were replaced by blue ones with pictures of pink flowers, and several of the mechanics woke up one morning with toothpaste decorating their face, and swore to punch the life out of whoever did this to them (But since they couldn't find who did it, they just beat up the new guy). However, the weekend has come. Weekends were extremely short, now that we were on earth, mainly because the process of getting home included 10 solid hours of bus-riding, which I'd gladly exchange for a day or two of spanish inquisition, but it turned out that those spanish guys either were not interested in the ISF, or didn't understand English, cause they never answered my pleads. However, on account of living in the northern part of the Magical Land of Iz, I was allowed to leave the ship and head for the bus station a few hours ahead of the rest of the crew, so I will be able to get home while the sun was still shining. In Spain.

And so I found myself standing alone in the intensely intense heat of the noon desert sun, in an isolated bus-station in the middle of nowhere, on the road that leads from Somewhere to Somewhere Else, waiting for my hell on wheels. Then I realized I could hear my footsteps; spread my arms without hitting any wall or person; and that I was, finally, after two weeks of condensed stupidity, alone.

I looked around to verify that information. Once it was verified, I said aloud, "Okay, Dimion, you can come out now."

      Enter: Dimion






She came out of behind my bag, with a wide smile. "Hye, Red," she said sweetly.

"Dimion, what the hell was that all about?" I demanded.

Dimion shook her head. "That's not how it goes." she said.

"It's not?" I got confused.

"No. It goes, 'Hello! Dimi!! I'm so glad to see you again!! I missed you so much!!!'"

I was forced to smile. "See, it's better!" Dimion exclaimed, "You're having fun already."

"Dimion, I am glad to see you again, but I just have to say, your timing was crappy. I mean, what did you think you were doing there?!"

"Uh." Dimion wrinkled her nose. "It was a disgusting place. Stinks, too. And hot. And all those people - I don't know where you found them."

"I'm not twelve years old anymore, you know." I introduced Dimion to the facts of life. "I'm in the army. The Space Force. And I didn't pick up those people."

"The space force?" Dimion raised an eyebrow that seemed to float above her head. She rose up into the air, until she was at my head's height, and looked around. Holding herself in the air, her wings made that all too familiar sound of bells. "This doesn't look like outer space to me."

"We're on renovation. Fixing our spaceship. On earth."

"Ah, damn." she said, sitting herself on my shoulder. "Flying in space would be neat."

"But that's no excuse for painting the mechanics with toothpaste."

Dimion shrugged. "I thought it was a school trip" she apologized.

"Or taking those stars away."

"You looked so cute and confused." she smiled.

"Or filling Pussy with Pac-Men."

"Filling wha-" abruptly, Dimion turned all red and nearly fell off my shoulder, staring wide-eyed at me.

"Pussy. It's the name of the computer." I'll have to remember about Dimion's over-sensitivity to this kind of words.

"Oh that..." Dimion said, gradually returning to her usual color, and straightening herself, "I didn't mean to do anything in that. It just seemed like a good computer, I wanted to see if it has some neat games in it."

"That computer is not for games."

"Oh." Dimion looked just a bit shameful, and perplexed. "What is it for, then?"

"And besides, that wrong did that poor computer technician do to you?"

"Oh yeah, sorry about that. He looked so sad with this funny shirt, cuffed to himself." She wrapped her own little arms around herself to demonstrate. "You tell him I'm sorry."

"I seriously don't think that in the kind of an institution he's going to, anyone's going to appreciate a sincere apology from an imaginary friend."

"Well then. Don't tell him. When will we get home and meet your family again?"

"Long time... I told you you came in a bad time. We have about 10 hours of bus-time till then."

"Well, we have alot to fill each other on" she smiled again. "It's good to see you again, Red. You haven't changed a bit."

"Dimi, I'm two feet taller."

She looked down from my shoulder. "well, you always seemed awfully big to me."