>>"Because they were too interesting in anal probes and leaving orphans stranded on Earth."

Abby tilted her head. That caused questions to come to mind. Before she could ask them, the adult-girl started answering the questions she asked before the green skinned man, probably an alien, responded. The ignorance made some sense. People didn't seem to want to know anything about mutations. She didn't like the idea that people killed others for the beliefs they had, but the blonde had realized that people would always argue about that kind of thing.

>>"..And Darwin's evolution has had endless criticisms, even though he did everything he could to account for them."

>>"Don't get me started on Darwin."

Darwin? That sounded familiar. But she couldn't pin it down. Oh! Her name. Right. "I'm Abby. And I think it did. Just," she turned towards the bookshelves. "Who's Darwin?"

"Some chimp from a cartoon show," Elliott said in a loud nasally voice. "Also, a scientist who came up with a theory about how over time, things change. People, animals. They evolve. And pass on traits through breeding." Sex. But you don't say sex in front of the children.

So why was he an idiot? "He didn't account for mutations." Elliott laughed. "Someone else had to. And they didn't get into all this flame shooting, laser eye stuff." Which meant that he only accounted for animals in his theories. And didn't understand what the future held. "Doesn't mean he was wrong... Just didn't account for things."

Which meant a lot of in the scientific community. "Also? Did not account for aliens."

"Again with the aliens." Amelia sighed. "He isn't an alien. He's a mutant. And he won't even move away from the book case to talk, because he doesn't want you to see how much he's laughing back there."

The information he was giving her wasn't totally crap, but it would be. Eventually. They just needed to give it time.

"This is distracting you from history." She said to Abby, "This science stuff is way beyond your history book." Interesting, but beyond it. "Listen to him and you'll fail it."

"You'll fail it," Elliott laughed. "She however, will win at life."

Cartoon show? Abby turned in her seat to face the bookshelf. "What cartoon show?" It sure sounded like one Abby might like.

>>"He isn't an alien. He's a mutant. And he won't even move away from the book case to talk, because he doesn't want you to see how much he's laughing back there."

"But if mutants exist, why couldn't aliens exist too?" Mutants weren't supposed to exist. But they did. Abby and Amelia were proof of that at least. Maybe the green guy too.

>>"This is distracting you from history. This science stuff is way beyond your history book."

Abby frowned a bit. She liked science. But Amelia was right. She was working on history. Science wasn't as hard since it didn't have so many dates to remember. "Win at life? How do you do that?" She'd heard of it, but she hadn't been able to ask before. Most of her classmates didn't like her, so she didn't feel comfortable asking.

"He doesn't know." Amelia sighed. Win at life. Seriously? The other questions Abby had asked, she hadn't addressed.

"Yeah I do." The green man cut in. There was the sound of a chair falling over backwards and movement through dead air, and suddenly the green man had flipped over the bookcase and landed casually in a chair in front of them.

"Okay, alien boy. How?" She said. And gritted her teeth.

"Wild Thornberrys," he said.

She stared at him. "That's how you win at life?" Her voice was incredulous.

"No, girl with stick up bottom." Elliott turned his entire body towards the little girl and smiled his jaggedly friendly zipper like smile. He was completely ignoring Amelia now. "That's the name of the cartoon. And you're completely right. If mutants exist, why not aliens? For that matter, why not ghosts or gods or more? People have believed in weirder stuff than that."


It was true. Amelia had heard about a mutant with the power to see ghosts. She had literally killed zombies one Halloween. It was only fair to say that she wasn't certain about aliens and their existence. Not that she would admit that to him.

"So tell me." She smiled. "What's the secret?"

Elliott ignored her.

"I don't know the secret of life." He said. "I'm sure it varies for everyone. But what I can tell you," he added. "Is that you live a better life if you do the things you love. So this-" he nabbed the textbook in front of her, closed it and unceremoniously chucked it over one shoulder, to Amelia and the librarians chagrin. "Really won't accomplish that."

Abby kinda ignored the banter between the two adults. Amelia didn't seem to like the green man, but Abby thought he was cool. Then he answered one of her questions. Well more than one, but tv show!

Wild Thornberrys. Abby mouthed that to herself. She would look it up later. The show sounded fun.

>>"I don't know the secret of life. I'm sure it varies for everyone. But what I can tell you, is that you live a better life if you do the things you love. So this-"

She blinked as the green man took her book.

>>"Really won't accomplish that."

The little blonde tilted her head. "I thought the answer to life was forty-two. Is that wrong?" She had heard that from a few older boys talking about it before. Though she wasn't too sure about it. This was a perfect time to ask though. She had two adults here with two different opinions which would help her see different sides.

Elliott didn't grow up with things like books such as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so the reference totally went over his head.

"Huh." He said.

He looked at the bossy girl who had been opposing him this entire time. Maybe she knew?

It always sucked when he didn't know these types of things. He got some references, but stuff like internet references or books or that sort of garbage just whew, whoosh, right over him. It came from having run away in school before he'd graduated. He had never gone to college. Maybe they taught you the meaning to life in college? Nah. That was stupid. And come to think of it, why was he waiting on the bossy girl to answer this question, because it was stupid, too! He opened his mouth and started talking... right as Amelia opened hers.

"No." Elliott said. "No, I think that isn't correct. How can a number be the meaning of anything, unless the question is a math problem?"

"It's from a book, Genius." Amelia sighed. "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a funny Science Fiction book starring an Earth Man and an Alien." She paused a beat, and added. "You'd probably like it."

But yes. 42. That was something. She turned her attention back to Abby. "That's a joke in the book. They ask what the ultimate answer is to the question of life, the universe, and well, everything. And after a really long time, the computer they ask says it's 42. But they asked what the answer was. They never asked the question."

Elliott chimed in. "So they got screwed. Because they were stupid."

"They got screwed because they were stupid," Amelia confirmed.

"Which just goes to show--" Elliott started.

Amelia cut him off. "-- That asking the right question is important."

They stared at each other. You could almost see the furious electrical sparks shooting between their eyes.

A book. Oh. So not a true thing. Abby watched the two adults as they discussed it. They kinda looked like they wanted to attack each other. That wasn't something Abby wanted. Amelia and the green man were both helping her. Oh, right. History. That's what they had been talking about before aliens and life and tv shows.

"Why do they call the War of 1812 the War of 1812 when it wasn't fought in just that year?" she blurted out. One of her eyes closed in a wince. Not exactly what she had been going for, but it was a question she had about history. That song about the war said "in 1814 we took a little trip" so it lasted at least two years. And anyway, they were back to the history questions. Maybe.

"Could you say the war of 1812 one more time, please?" Elliott smiled sweetly at her. "I don't think it got said enough in that sentence right there."

This was something he did not know, fortunately. He had had better things to do with his time during school than study human history. Wars and embargoes and political unease, meh. He'd been too busy selling stuff to people for cash! The only way he'd have had that answer right there would have been if he'd read it on a sold test answer key. Not to say that he had ever done that. Or had he.

"It might've just been the year the war started in, and so they decided to name it that. Kind of like how I don't think the hundred years war lasted exactly 100 years." He made a sour face. Bleh. History.

"More than that," Amelia chimed in.

The green man gave her a look like 'of course you'd know that'. She could almost hear the 'miss goodie two-shoes witch' in his mind.

"and yes. The war of 1812 started in 1812 and lasted about three years. Names that sound good are easier to remember. So people wax poetic and call something something because it sounds best. A rose by any other name," she waxed herself.

The green man rolled his eyes so hard she worried for a moment that they would fall out of his skull. Although, how she could tell he was rolling his eyes when his eyes were a uniform red color and had no visible dot in the center with which to judge was anyone's guess. Most likely, it was the visible cues. Like rolling his head back and staring at the sky like 'god kill me now'. She was reading a lot into things today.

>>"Could you say the war of 1812 one more time, please? I don't think it got said enough in that sentence right there."

Abby pouted at the green man. She wasn't sure if he was teasing or making fun of her. Probably teasing but she was never really sure.

Then they were talking about names and hundred years that were more than a hundred years and names and... Shakespeare? That made her think back to the Montague/Capulet war she and some other students had in the library. That had been fun.

"Wax poetic?" she wondered. "Why would people 'wax poetic' about war? People die." There were a lot of things that didn't make sense to Abby. Luckily, she had two people who could give her two different answers, which was actually kind of nice.

Elliott had an answer for that, a fact that surprised even him. "War is something that is horrible, but it is also a common experience for people of that era. Soldiers fight alongside men who become like brothers to them, and there's this identity that develops. It's kind of like patriotism, I guess. It's kind of a big subject. But look at the Japanese during WWII, as an example." Here was the part where his experience in martial arts and crazy Japanese martial arts movies became a sort of experience for him that he could share.

"You see the way of the warrior, the way of the sword, the way of the samurai. Bushido, they called it. It really became a big idea then. There was a lot of writings done about it. People romanticized the idea, or wrote about it to change the public opinion. They created the thought of noble samurai honor. It's possible it existed for some, but a lot of warriors were simply men who had swords, maybe armor, who fought because there was money in it. Or maybe they liked their ruler. But someone decided that there was something of honor in the samurai, and so the whole thing grew."

He wasn't entirely sure if he'd covered even one thing from her question. He just expounded on the first idea that came to him.

The green man talked about patriotism and soldiers and samurai, of all things. Amelia let him finish. She really wanted to see where he went with it all. It both seemed connected to the question... and really didn't. It was interesting, whatever it was.

He finished. Now she could comment. But really, she didn't have much. That was a shocker. Usually, she had too much to say, like she loved the sound of her own voice. But she had to say something. So she did. "People can get poetic about anything." Amelia said. She shook her head. "What he said, about brothers in battle. That makes sense. Also, identity. Police officers deal with terrible things all the time, but there's something there that makes us do what we do, despite that. We do good. Soldiers probably feel along similar lines."

There. That was at least coherent.