Thursday Taster 50: Parallel Slip

Hello and welcome to a new Thursday Taster, the day when awesome writers all over the blogosphere come together to give you tasty bits of their last fiction. You can find the list here.

It's time for Frederique to learn a bit more about Michelle's father.

The panel came closer and inclined itself in front of me. It seemed to be floating in the air. It was just at the right position for me to read without hurting my neck and I didn't even need to carry it. I understood that reading in bed seemed fullish if you had a screen like that. But why would my father even need books in that case.

"Before we start," I said, "I have another question."

"Yes," the voice said.

"Why do my father have books? Why is not everything on screen?"

"The books are coming from other planets," the voice said.

"But I can still read them," I said.

"I'm glad to hear that," the voice said.

"No I mean how many languages are represented in this room," I asked. I wanted to ask in this universe but that was a bit too much for a start.

"It seems that you have the ability of your father to understand any languages you come across, in this room there are only fifty, that's about one third from your father's personal collection, I do not know how many he was able to read and communicate one," the voice said.

So I was able to read multiple alien language in this universe but I still managed to failed Spanish in my own. That sounded pretty unfair. I wished the ability would extend to my birth planet.

"All right, lets get started," I said.

And I dived into the past of my father. Apparently, he was used to disappear several hours at a time since he was kid and nobody knew why or where he went. He wouldn't tell anyone. He would ask to go to the toilet during class and be gone for hours. That was really bizarre but that wasn't the only bizarre things on his file. The other was that he had a problem with authority and that he was only saved by making accurate prediction on what would happen in science progress. He was apparently a scientific genius. That's why he had become captain.

The all file made really little sense to me.

"Frederique, are you all right?" Sabine was at the bottom of the stairs and I hadn't fallen yet.

I was all caught up, on my knees, my forehead on the handle and my hand to firm on it that my fingers had turned white.

I blinked three times and took a deep breath.

"I didn't look where I was going and I slipped," I said.

"I told Jonas so many times not to leave toys in the stairs, it's so dangerous," Sabine said wiping her hand in a towel and disappearing once again in the kitchen.

I didn't fall, at least that was something to be happy about. I didn't know why I had been to that universe just now and why I had stayed over there long enough to be able to read my father's entire file while the time here had only been a minute.

"We're having panned pork fillet and french fries," Sabine said. "Your father said you like that."

"I love it," I said.

I was my favorite dish since I was a child. Something we used to eat as a family on Sundays before my mother became obsessed with roasted chicken on a spike.

I walked down the stairs careful not to trip again on Jonas's toys.

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