Fic: Explorers (Sarah Jane Adventures)

[lilacsigil]

Title: Explorers
Author: lilacsigil
Fandom: Sarah Jane Adventures
Pairing/characters: Rani/non-humanoid alien OFC
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Sarah Jane Adventures belongs to the BBC and no infringement is intended.
Prompt: 1149 Sarah Jane Adventures, Rani or Maria. Is a crush on an alien woman really being interested in a woman? Or just an alien? How will they ever tell the parents?
Summary: Rani invites a friendly alien home intending to learn more about her, but both of them have a great deal to discover. Sarah Jane knows the feeling.
Warnings: Mention of teenage consensual sexual experience.
Author's Notes: For lgbtfest Thanks to smirnoffmule for a highly constructive beta.




"I assure you," said Mr Smith in his smooth, robotic voice. "Zn is here, but currently unable to become visible to your senses."

Sarah Jane checked the screen over Luke's shoulder and frowned at the readings. "Thank you, Mr Smith."

"I'm here to meet a friendly alien for once, and we can't see it?" Clyde waved his hands around as if he was swatting a fly.

Rani smirked at Clyde's over-enthusiasm. "And I'm sure the alien appreciates you flailing at it. Sarah Jane, what's stopping, um, Zen from showing up?"

"Zn," Sarah Jane corrected. "And we don't know yet."

Luke pointed at the screen. "Yes we do! It's Mr Smith's power source – it's interfering with the frequencies where Zn's existence overlaps with our audiovisual perception."

Rani jostled Clyde to get closer to the screen, but the readings were as confusing as ever to her, though Luke and Sarah Jane seemed to understand them.

"That didn't happen last time Zn's people spoke me, when they asked me to collect data for them." Sarah Jane frowned. "We didn't make visual contact, but we had no problem talking."

"Oh, yeah, but Mr Smith's had an upgrade since then, remember?" Luke patted the hulking computer.

Clyde and Sarah Jane nodded a little too heartily, and Rani stared at them, confused. It must have been before she moved into Bannerman Close, but the others were usually falling over themselves to tell her about their adventures, rather than shutting down the conversation like that.

"The field of effect is pretty small, though." Luke stood up. "If we go outside, that should be enough distance to allow Zn to appear to us. Mr Smith, can Zn understand us?"

"Certainly, Luke. I will increase the electromagnetic shielding around my power source to make sure there are no further difficulties."

"Come on, then, Zn." Sarah Jane marched everyone down the stairs and outside, as Mr Smith retreated into the wall with the hiss of mighty hydraulics.

***

They had to walk almost to the front wall before Zn appeared in a flicker of pale blue light. Rani waited for the rest of Zn to appear, but apparently that was it: a thin twist of pale blue, about two feet long, like a ripped piece of sky floating above the lawn. When Rani looked closer, she could see thousands of tiny cubes inside the blue light, swinging forwards and backwards as if she was looking at an Escher drawing. It was dizzying, and Sarah Jane caught her arm as she swayed.

"Rani, Clyde, Luke, this is Zn."

"I am most highly honoured." Zn's voice was quite high-pitched and made Rani's ears buzz.

Clyde was the first to step forward, as usual. "Hi! I'm Clyde. That's Rani, that's Luke, and I suppose you know Sarah Jane already."

"We have not met in person."

"That's right." Sarah Jane's face looked quite unearthly in Zn's pale light. "I actually spoke to Zn's teachers – is that the right term?"

"Indeed it is, Sarah Jane." Zn's shape slipped and reformed with every word, like smoke that never dispersed, and Rani couldn't stop herself staring. With any luck, someone as non-humanoid as Zn wouldn't know that she was being rude.

"And Zn's teachers asked if Mr Smith would collect certain solar observations on their behalf. They like to send their students out to safer parts of the universe to retrieve data."

Clyde grinned. "Cool! Flying across the universe sounds a lot better than anything we get to do at school. Last year we got to visit the sewage processing plant."

Zn flickered a little. "To train you to process waste?"

"Yeah, maybe I'll change to your school next year?"

"Hey!" Rani interjected, annoyed at Clyde hogging the conversation yet again. "My dad isn't sending you out to collect poo this year, you should be glad."

"Your parent is a teacher?"

"Yes," Rani smiled at Zn, though looking directly into the blue light hurt her eyes. "He's the head teacher at our school. He doesn't send us flying around the universe, but we do get to go into the city sometimes."

"Let me guess," Clyde butted in, addressing Rani this time. "Teachers are important where he – she – Zn, are you a he or she? 'It' doesn't really work for me."

"I am not inanimate," Zn agreed, "Perhaps 'she' is the best choice from your gender binary? I am able to give birth, but I am thought far too young by my cultural standards."

Clyde spluttered, but Rani nodded, excited. "So you're a teenage girl who gets to explore the universe?"

"I don't think it's exploring, just following the old paths."

Sarah Jane laughed. "You'll get there, Zn. We have a problem, though – the volume of information that Mr Smith has collected is quite large, and we don't have currently have access to anything that can store so much information in a form that you can read."

"Apart from Mr Smith himself," Luke added. "So until Mum and I can get his power source fully shielded, we can't transfer the data over to you."

"Well, Zn can stay with me." Rani folded her arms and stuck out her chin, ready for argument. "She can turn invisible if my parents are there. It'll be no problem, and then we'll be right across the road for when Mr Smith is shielded enough."

Zn twisted and shifted to a brighter blue. "I would like that very much!"

***

Rani flopped down on her bed while Zn floated around the bedroom. "So, does everyone in your class get to meet other species?"

Zn hovered closer. "Oh no. I had to ask first. You're considered fairly safe."

"Mostly harmless?" Rani laughed, but Zn just inclined slightly, as if imitating a nod. "Still, even if they only let you pick up the data right now, it sounds awesome. I'd love to fly around the galaxy visiting intelligent life-forms and finding out about their civilisations."

"We don't collect that data."

Rani sat up and looked at Zn, trying not to stare too long into the vortex of tiny cubes, even though it was hard to remember to look away. "Really? What data are you getting on us, then?"

"Your magnetic and solar activity, for our maps. I like life-forms, but that's weird. I had to beg to come here." Zn folded up at her ends, shrinking down a little. Rani wasn't sure if Zn was trying to imitate human body language or if it was just Rani anthropomorphising her movements, but she certainly looked embarrassed.

"Don't worry. Most people here are so scared of aliens that they pretend they don't exist, no matter how strong the evidence. And fair enough, I suppose, a lot of aliens are dangerous."

Zn's blue light paled. "Your race is not dangerous."

"Of course we are, especially to each other!" Rani shook her head, then sighed. It was no use getting angry at Zn, who had done nothing to deserve it. The last thing Rani wanted was for her to leave. "That's a familiar kind of danger, I suppose. There's a lot of fear of the unknown."

"You don't fear, though, or your friends." Zn hovered tentatively – Rani presumed – but a little closer.

Rani smiled. She was pretty sure she looked peculiar in the cool light, like Sarah Jane had, but she tried to shake off her self-consciousness – Zn wouldn't judge how she was meant to look! "Not many people want to know, though. I suppose we're just weird like you, then!"

Zn unfolded again, and her previous colour was restored, a clear pale blue like the sky in late spring. She rotated slightly, the little cubes inside her body flickering and re-arranging, and Rani had to shield her eyes.

"I haven't met anyone who is a combination of two and three dimensions like you. It makes me a bit dizzy."

Zn's light shone on Rani's skin. "I have many dimensions. You only perceive a few. But you contain many substances and this is strange, too."

Rani held out her hands to watch the different shades of blue shimmering over her skin and fingernails, refracting in ways that her eyes couldn't quite catch, no matter how she tried to understand it. "Oh, yeah, we're made of all kinds of minerals and chemicals. Don't let it bother you, and I'll try not to stare at your cubes, okay?"

"You see cubes? That's so funny!" Zn flickered around the edges, like laughter.

Rani laughed, too. "Well, what do I look like to you?

Zn paused before she spoke again. "A planet's molten crust full of tiny lightning rivers."

"Thank you, I think." Rani took a deep breath. Zn being so near was making her hair tangle and float, just like the time she touched the Van de Graaff generator in science class, and she brushed the stray tendrils back from her face distractedly. "So, if you're not collecting data on civilisations or people, why are you travelling around to collect it? I mean, can't you just sit at home and look through telescopes?"

"Many places are not visible to our home sensors, and we don't measure physical distance in the same way."

Rani persisted, still smiling. "Still, you must have some interest in us, and other life forms."

"I told you, we don't take an interest in your history. In five thousand years, how will anyone remember you? Any one being is not relevant to our data. It's only my hobby." Zn drew back a little, coiling loosely.

Rani glared at Zn, though she was fairly sure that Zn was just as bad at interpreting her expressions as she was at understanding Zn's body language. "People are remembered by the things they do, or their ancestors or descendants, or their part in their culture!"

"But this is nothing to the universe in the long term." Zn sounded terse.

"So geniuses like Einstein or Brahmaguptra, or even heroes like Sarah Jane, who's saved the planet, are nothing?"

"Every place fights to reduce ignorance and to survive. Why are you angry, when I told you that I take interest?"

Rani jumped to her feet and pointed a finger at Zn, who twisted, scattering colour. "Oh, I know all about that tone of voice! I shouldn't be cross with you, because you're the one who deigns to drop in on we primitives and talk to us? You take interest, all right, but we're just your hobby. You don't want to change anything, you just want to chat with us then fly off home with your authentic holiday snaps!"

"You say you know our culture?" Zn seemed confused, rather than angry in return.

"Not yours exactly, but yeah, yours is hardly the only culture to think it's the pinnacle of civilisation. You're not the only ones who think that what you choose to be important is all that's important, or what you think is rational is all that's rational. On Earth, it was based on skin colour and language – well, it still is, for a lot of people. People from Britain, this island, would come to places like India, where my grandparents and my mother lived, and observe them, and take their wealth and their knowledge. But they didn't think there was any value to Indian people, not really." Rani flicked her hair back again, as Zn's field was making it all float out around her head again.

"But you all look the same," Zn muttered, her voice soft and hesitant.

"Of course we do! And you know what? I've seen at least one parallel universe where entirely different laws of science apply. There, you and I might look just the same, and something else might think your civilisation and science are unimportant."

Zn's blue light twisted around the room, zigzagging from near the ceiling to the floor, flickering alarmingly before coming to a halt in front of Rani, who now had her hands on her hips. Zn elongated and stopped flickering, facing Rani directly. "I always liked other life-forms, but I didn't know why. They tell me that life-forms are far too fleeting to matter. But if we all look the same to someone, then why do we? Why do I even matter? Why do you matter, Rani?"

Rani sighed. "You can tell me apart from Sarah Jane or Clyde or Luke, can't you?"

"Yes, when I think about it." Zn held still, though inside her body the tiny cubes still shifted and poured from one shape to another.

"Well, none of us are the same. We've all had different experiences, we have different brains and different thoughts – even if you cloned me right now, brain and all, my clone and I would soon grow apart. Each of us is unique in the universe. Those lightning rivers you see flowing through me? They'll never be the same again, in the whole of time."

"It's very rare to find something unique, even for us." Zn drifted closer, the palest of lights shining on Rani's face.

"Seriously, it depends how hard you look. It's easy to dismiss entire cultures and float on by. It's much harder to find value in what you see. You ever think that's maybe why your teachers sent you here? To add meaning to all that data you're collecting?" Zn swirled in confusion, but Rani stepped forward, determined. "That data Mr Smith will transfer to you – how do you do that? Can you read my data?"

Zn coiled and stretched out again, moulding her shape to Rani's with just a few inches of space between them. "Yes, I can read you, Rani. I eat electricity."

Rani's smile returned – Zn wanted to understand as much as Rani did, to reach out into the strange and beautiful. Rani could show her that, just as Zn was showing herself to Rani, parts both good and bad. "Then do it. Read who I am and you'll see exactly what I mean."

The blue cord that was Zn's visible manifestation flexed and stretched, the flickering cubes rushing around in dazzling cascades, until she matched Rani's shape exactly. Rani had a moment to think that perhaps this was dangerous, then Zn's light covered her.

There was a moment of blankness, then Rani felt Zn thrum through her nerves, lighting up her nerve endings. It wasn't like an electric shock, though, or painful at all. Instead Rani could feel every part of her body at once, all of her thrilling to Zn's touch as if her whole body was being kissed. She could feel Zn, too, in a way that her eyes and ears had failed to do – she could feel the topography of Zn's body inside her own. The tiny fountains of cubes were now impulses and movement instead of geometry. Zn was reacting, too, swooping through Rani's nerves and brain, simultaneously remaining still and travelling on, perfectly matched to the sensations transmitted through Rani's brain and spine.

They fell apart – Rani backwards onto her bed and Zn up towards the ceiling – and Rani gasped for breath. Zn had taken on a different shape, like an explosion of thread rather than a single twisted ribbon, and it took Rani a moment to realise that Zn was mirroring the shape of Rani's hair as it spread out around her head like fern fronds.

Zn lay above Rani, holding to her mirrored shape. "I know you. You are unique." Her cool light spread over Rani's skin, and both of them could feel the smile in her voice.

***

Rani twisted her hands together, and she had no idea why. When she'd left Zn invisibly observing her father talking on the phone and walked across the road, she'd been perfectly composed. "Sarah Jane, can I ask you..."

"Go ahead, Rani." Sarah Jane was as brisk as always, but she turned to look at Rani and waited.

"Have you, ever, I mean, with an alien?"

Sarah Jane didn't even blink. "Well, that's a difficult question to define, really."

"I don't even know what to call it!"

"You don't have to categorise everything, Rani." Sarah Jane took Rani's arm and sat her down on the couch. "Some people like to have neat categories, and that's fine. But then there's people like you and me, and like Zn, who are explorers. We find new things, and there's not always words for them, yet."

"I really like her – we understand each other so much more now, and I know she's only going to be here for a few days..." Rani's voice tailed off.

"So what you're really worried about isn't what you did, but that when Zn leaves, you'll be lonely?"

Rani glared at Sarah Jane for a moment before looking down at her hands. "I didn't come here to ask you that, but yeah. Yeah, she listens to me, and she tells me about the universe, and she's beautiful."

Sarah Jane held up a hand. "I don't need the gory details, Rani. I said that people like us are explorers, and it's true. The downside is loneliness, sometimes, and if that was too high a price for you, you'd be pulling away from Zn, not reaching out."

Rani shook her head and smiled up at Sarah Jane, though she had to blink rapidly to keep her tears back. "I suppose at least I'm not going to have to explain to my parents that I'm a xenophilic lesbian?"

Sarah Jane put her arm around Rani. "Zn has a vast number of dimensions folded up inside herself – is it too much to hope that there's an 'explaining to parents' dimension?"

Rani laughed, then. "Yeah, I think that might be too much!"

She didn't pull away from Sarah Jane, but her gaze was already straying back to her own house across the road, to Zn, and Sarah Jane held her a little tighter, just for a moment, before letting her go.

Comments

[wendynever]

I liked this. Very nice parallels to colonialism and its aftereffect. The descriptions of Zn were very cool.

[lilacsigil]

Thank you! Alien/human meetings where technology levels are vastly different always seem to be rather fraught with meaning to me, and that's not something that I wanted to overlook.

[kespionage]

I love aliens that are really alien, and Zn is just beautifully so. Although I've seen precisely two episodes of the Sarah Jane Adventures, both preceding Rani's arrival onto the show, but her bravery, curiosity, and righteous anger seem perfectly in tune with what I've heard of her. And the parallels with colonialism and the rather more modern ideas of "go to foreign country, plunder their culture for spiritual experience, come back" are really interesting. Lovely work!