Free Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson Page A

in the early evening for a date with Dana, counting her polygons or something. I flopped exhausted on the couch next to Jenny. "Eddie wants to go to the fireworks," she said. "They start at eight-thirty, but my sister is having a picnic at eight, and we can drop him off."
    "We can't take Curic out in public," I said.
    "Says who? It's the Fourth of July. We're going to keep her cooped up in your house for twenty-four hours?"
    "Says the BEA. They don't want Curic to start a riot."
    Curic padded into the living room. "What kind of person do you think I am?" she said. "I'm not going to instigate a riot!"
    "Other people might see you and decide to riot," I said.
    "That's fucked up," said Curic. "What are the fire works?"
    "Colorful rocket-propelled explosions," said Jenny.
    "So, the riot has extenuating circumstances."
    "Eddie, where did you get that?" asked Jenny. Eduardo had cinched a large, sharp red fractal onto his wrist and was punching the air like the newest member of the Nuclear Ninjas.
    "I made that for him," said Curic. "It's a toy."
    "What's it made of? Jesus! It looks like Skewer Sue's bracelet."
    "I believe you would classify it as a plastic."
    "Well, it's—honey, take it off. You'll cut yourself. Jesus."
    "I apologize," said Curic. "Our research indicated that human kids love fractals of dimension 1.4. Ariel, please take me to the fire works. If your government contact tries to fuck you over, you can say that I specifically asked for this."
    "What difference will that make?"
    "I am the representative of an ancient and powerful civilization," Curic squeaked. "They know not to fuck with me."
    Jenny had covered Eduardo's ears again. "You know that 'fuck' is a swear word, right?" I said.
    "Oh," said Curic. "You swear too much, Ariel."
    As it got dark we all walked to the park for fireworks, Curic riding on my shoulders. Nobody noticed, or they just thought I had an ugly kid. Then Jenny and Curic had the bright idea to hit the bars for some live music, which I never do often enough but I didn't think it was a good time.
    "Remember the riot," I cautioned.
    "I remember you being afraid of a riot that didn't happen," said Curic.
    "We'll be fine," said Jenny. "People are always saying to Keep Austin Weird." She pointed at Curic on my shoulders. "Well, here is Weird."
    "It's true," said Curic.
    Against my better judgement, we went, and we had a great time. Curic was the guest of honor. She drank a dozen free shot glasses of beer and ate a lot of Twinkies, and everywhere we went she was invited onstage to sing with the band. Her Peter Lorre voice is totally incompatible with human music and everyone loved it, unlike the time I got drunk and climbed onstage at the Dog Pound.
    Around 11 PM Curic began acting tipsy, but it was just her male brain going to sleep and her female brain waking up. There was no memory loss—girl-Curic still knew where she was and what we were doing—but there were drastic personality changes. In particular, girl-Curic proved to be a lot rowdier than boy-Curic. Or maybe she was getting tipsy after all. Eventually she knocked over a glass and apologized a lot and we took a taxi back to my place. The taxi driver wouldn't take our money, but he did want his picture taken with Curic.
    We arrived at one in the morning. Jenny went upstairs and zonked out on my bed without even asking me, so I sat on the couch and talked with Curic for a couple hours, the way you talk when you meet someone from another country. Curic doesn't sleep, so I left her with a curated stack of comic books Jenny brought for her, and staggered into the retro-game room to sleep on the spare couch.
Blog post, July 5
    Happy Fourth of July! Or, if you're not American, happy fourth of July! Yesterday was Curic's first visit to Earth, and we had a hell of a time, so busy I didn't have time to write about it. Which worked out well because I was also forbidden from writing about it until Curic had safely returned to Ring City.
    Curic snooped