Origin by J.A. Konrath, Jack Kilborn

walked through the Octopus and went down the Green Arm. Before entering the Mess Hall she absently reached for her purse to check her hair in her make-up compact. The gesture annoyed her; she hadn’t carried a purse or a compact in a long time.
    She settled for finger-combing her bangs back, and went into the cafeteria. The holies were already there, locked in their usual intense debate. Dr. Belgium was measuring coffee to put into the automatic maker, his actions as meticulous and precise as they were in the lab. Andy was leaning against the water cooler, hands in his pockets. Sun caught his eye and tried to look sympathetic. He gave her a shy smile back and walked over to her.
    “Sorry about…”
    “No need,” Sun interrupted. “We’ve all been there.”
    “I haven’t thrown up since doing keg stands in college.”
    “Where did you go to school?”
    “Oh. Harvard.”
    He said it as if it embarrassed him. Sun had met plenty of Harvard men, and they usually wore it like a badge of honor.
Interesting.
    “How about you?” Andy asked.
    “Johns… uh Iowa State.”
    “Were you going to say Johns Hopkins? I didn’t know they offered veterinary medicine.”
    Sun thought fast. “I lived in Maryland, took some undergrad classes there. Transferred to Iowa.”
    If he’d caught her lie she couldn’t tell.
    “Is that what you always wanted to be? A vet?”
    “Yeah.” Another lie. “Did you always want to be a linguist?”
    “I never really thought about it. It’s something I’ve always been good at.”
    “Do you like it?”
    “I don’t know. I guess I do, or why would I do it, right? Do you like being a vet?”
    “Yes,” Sun said, happy to say something honest. “I don’t beat myself up if my patients die.”
    Andy smiled. He had a pleasant smile, she thought. She smiled back, surprised at how good it felt.
    “I’m still not sure if I want to stay,” Andy said. “This isn’t a normal translating job for me. I don’t know if I can do it.”
    “It’s okay to be afraid.”
    “I’d bet you’ve never been afraid of anything in your entire life.”
    “Not true. When I was seven, a bat got in my bedroom. Harmless, couldn’t have been bigger than a tennis ball. But the way it flew; in a figure eight, unbelievably fast, inches from my face on every pass—it terrified me. Then it landed on my head, got tangled up in my hair. I was so scared I couldn’t move. Took about five minutes to get up the guts to scream. Seemed like an eternity.”
    “What happened?”
    “Dad came in, caught it with a blanket, let it outside. He said it must have come in through the window. I didn’t open my window again until I was eighteen.”
    They shared a small laugh, which felt even better than the smile.
    “Well, now you’re taking care of the biggest bat in the history of the world,” Andy said.
    “Gotta face your fears sometime. Besides, I think Bub’s a wee bit too big to get tangled in my hair.”
    “You don’t find him terrifying?”
    “At first I did. Now I’m more intrigued than scared. Aren’t you just a little bit curious about him?”
    Andy rubbed his upper lip. “It’s hard to be curious when breakfast is coming out of your nose.”
    “Just think about it for a second. Every person on earth, no matter what country or culture, has some kind of idea of the devil. But no one has ever seen him before. Don’t you want to know more about him?”
    “You think he’s really Satan?”
    “Actually, I find that pretty hard to believe.”
    “So what is he? An alien or something?” Andy asked.
    “That’s hard to believe too. But of the two, I’d buy the alien theory more than the biblical one. His physiology is just too strange.”
    “An alien, huh? So is he the kind that flies around with Elliot, or the kind that eats Sigorney Weaver?”
    “I don’t know yet. He seems friendly.”
    “Maybe that’s because he’s locked up. I wonder how friendly he’d be on the
other side
of the