Alekai's heart shot into his throat. He froze and turned back.
"Move along," another guard waved a dismissive hand at Alekai. "Nothing to see here."
"What's wrong, officer?" Jesse asked in her most pitiful female voice.
The guard softened a bit. "The man behind you with that monkey didn't register his pet so they're just taking the monkey off the list of passengers."
He moved his attention onto the next passengers. "Keep moving. Move along. You're holding up the line."
Alekai and Jesse glanced at each other as they continued to follow the flow of humanity drifting towards the next gate.
As they approached the second gate, Jesse began to grip Alekai's hand tighter and tighter. That monkey incident had spooked her.
He could tell she was stressing out so he pulled on her hand, holding her back for a moment.
"Muriel." He muttered. She ignored him.
"Muriel Omswick. I'm talking to you." He tapped her shoulder with his other hand.
For a moment, she looked up at him with a confused questioning gaze. But then she blinked as understanding flooded into her brain.
"I hear you Cle—Cletus." She responded, trying not to laugh.
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Say my name again. This time, say it like you really love me."
That did it.
Jesse, aka Muriel Omswick burst out into uncontrollable laughter.
"Shhhh!" He tried to silence her but she could not stop laughing.
Clearing his throat, Alekai grabbed her and shoved her face into his chest, even as her shoulders continued to shake with laughter.
For all intents and purposes, it merely seemed as if a man was comforting a woman as she cried from having to leave family members behind on Earth as she traveled to a distant planet in a different part of the galaxy.
In reality, tears of uncontrollable mirth were streaming down her face as she gripped his torso trying not to make any sounds.
After a short time, the couple continued on their way to the next set of gates. They blended into the mass of humanity, all trying to get to another world.
The second gate loomed above them, huge and majestic. The words Space Port of The Angels (LAX-SP) had been carved in bold relief on the stone archway and painted a bright red with orange highlights.
He and Jesse continued shuffling through acting nonchalant and worldly as if they traveled all the time even though Alekai had never left the suburbs of LA in his entire life and Jesse had barely ventured anywhere outside of military destinations.
This check point was much more intense.
The guards had serious demeanors on their stoic faces and then actually looked at the passports, checking for obvious fakes. They passed the discs through several types of scanners and then returned them to Alekai and Jesse.
The bio-signatures scan was heart-stopping.
Jesse went through first. Her eyes were grim and fierce with determination. Alekai wanted to tell her to relax and breathe a bit but she was already beyond his reach.
Her squared shoulders were stiff. She walked through as though marching into the gates of hell.
The officer barely glanced at her. With all her shining blonde tresses pinned and tucked under one of Alekai's old beanies, she looked rather dull.
The scanners seemed to think nothing was wrong. Her bio-signature matched with the passport well enough that it triggered no alarm bells.
Once Jesse had safely passed through, it was Alekai's turn next.
He took a deep breath and walked through.
BEEP.
His heart hammered in his ears.
"Excuse me Mister uh…Cletus Omswick?" The officer in charge of the bio-signature scanner waved his hand.
"There's a bit of an anomaly. Can you come back and walk through again?"
Alekai nodded and went back to the front of the machine.
"Okay. It's been reset. Please walk through again. Slowly."
Alekai stepped through as slowly as he could.
BEEP.
The officer sighed and shook his head as he looked at the data streaming through on his virtual monitor.
"That cannot be right." He looked back up at Alekai, his face red with embarrassment.
"Please try it again. This machine is acting up really strangely."
Again, Alekai returned to the front of the scanner and waited for it to reset before stepping through.
BEEP.
"What in hell is wrong with this thing?" One of the supervisors came around.
"I'm sorry Sir, but the bio-signature for Mr. Cletus Omswick is coming back scrambled."
"What do you mean? The data looks uncorrupted." The Supervisor scrolled through the reams of data spewing forth from the virtual monitor.
"Look right there," the officer pointed to one section of the report.
"First it says he's not human." He pointed to another section. "And then it says he's dead."
The man shook his head. "Stupid machine can't tell a living person from a dead snake."
The supervisor sighed. "I know what the problem is with this dang blasted machine."
He reached his hand up and touched the top of the sensor reader. "Mr. Cletus Omswick is too tall. The machine has trouble reading people who are a little out of the normal size range.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yup. We had a really large lady come through a few weeks ago. She was so big, she had to wedge herself through the reader, and the sides of her tummy were rubbing up against the sensors."
He chuckled. "The computer read her as a blob of jellyfish or some other such nonsense."
The officers laughed with each other and waved Alekai through with an apologetic smile.
He gave them a nod and joined Jesse at the other end where she was waiting for him with a worried look in her baby blue eyes.
"Is everything okay?" Jesse mouthed.
He leaned down towards her face, as if to kiss her, but at the last moment, he turned slightly and whispered. "I almost got caught there. My snake bio-signature was coming on so strong, it got picked up by the computers."
Jesse took a deep breath, as if she was startled.
"Well. We made it through so let's keep going."
He straightened up and tapped her nose. "Lead the way, wife."
Jesse pressed her lips together and turned away.
Alekai grinned. It was so much fun to tease her.