A Plain Jane Book One Read Free

Lucas Stone was trying to give them more work made her want a
small moon in return, and maybe even a large planet too.
    It was unusual for her to
be in a bad mood because, as Mandy would point out, she was far too
boring to have an emotional reaction as interesting as anger. Yet
Jane wasn't exactly pleased at the moment. So she sat there, pursed
her lips, and returned to her work. The administrative unit she
worked for was responsible for the data collection, consolidation,
and maintenance of all results, enrollments, and related tasks that
went on throughout the Galactic Force. It was a fairly simple job,
and didn't require a great deal of skill or training, but Jane
liked to think she was at least okay at it, if that was something
worthy to admit on the same day that the great Lucas Stone had
popped his head in the door.
    The best and the
brightest, apparently that was what Lucas wanted on his trip. Fair
enough, everyone always wanted the best and brightest, nobody ever
wanted the slightly okay and the moderately interesting. Well,
nobody but Jane that was.
    ~~~
    Jane worked until late
that night. With the hullabaloo over Stone's visit, everyone else
had been far too busy talking about his heroic mission to bother
getting any more work done. So Jane, being Jane, had offered to
stay late and do what was needed. Plus, she always liked working
late anyway; if she had her preference, she would work alone. It
wasn't because she shunned human company, or alien company, for
that matter. Jane wasn't antisocial; she was just awkward, quiet,
and apparently far too innocent. Whenever she espoused her
'sugar-coated, candy-style views of the universe', Mandy or others
always told her that she simply didn't know what she was talking
about. That was another reason why Jane never bothered to go out.
Whenever people started to talk about the current state of the
Galactic Senate, as they always did, she would always put forth her
rather happy, optimistic views, only to be shot down and told she
was thinking like a child.
    Yet she didn't hate her
co-workers, far from it; Jane held them in high esteem and valued
each and every one of them. She just knew she was different. Very
different. Different in a way that everybody else would assume made
her ordinary, but she knew it went beyond that. She knew there was
more to her, and that if people bothered, if they tried, if they
suspended their views and judgments for just long enough to get to
know her, they would see what was on the inside. All the
adventures, all the romance, all the life.
    Jane knew she did not fit
in. She knew that she’d never fitted in. Even as a child, she’d
been different. After all, she wasn't a human but she had grown up
on Earth. Not that you could tell without a thorough physical exam,
of course, but Jane was technically an alien. She wasn't an
interesting alien: she wasn't like an Elurian mercenary or a Hirean
sprinter, or anything like that. Jane's alien DNA was, fittingly,
quite plain. She had the full appearance of a human, but she wasn't
quite as strong, quick, or attractive. As one of her colleagues had
once joked, Jane managed to do human duller than the humans did.
She didn't have any pincers, any tails, no third eye, no incredible
strength and agility, nothing to set her aside from the crowd.
Which pretty much summed up Jane perfectly: there was not a thing
in her history, schooling, ability, or her appearance that could
possibly set her apart from the crowd. In fact, all of her features
did exactly the opposite: they embedded her so far into the realm
of normalcy that she became just too normal, so normal, in fact,
that there was zero point in talking to her or looking her
way.
    She planned on working for
at least the next two hours, and then taking the late transport
back home. She would have all tomorrow morning off because of the
overtime, so she could spend most of the night sitting up on the
window ledge gazing at the stars. One peculiarity about