Chief cook and Dishwasher

-2-

But he missed. Well, that's not entirely true. It was like Jem dematerialized or something and the bullet went right through her and lodged itself in the opposite wall raising a thin spray of plaster as it did.
James fell to his knees. 'We're all going to die, aren't we?' he said.
'Not if I can help it,' Jem said.
'Come on Sarah, I'll take you home.' JC half cajoled, half shoved her out of there. That bastard. I can already see how that would play out: Sarah: Oh JC, I'm so scared JC: here, let me help you to bed. That bastard.
Sarah mumbled, 'bye,' and they left, and then it was just the three of us. Well, James was half catatonic so I don't know that he counted, but we stayed and no one was sure what happens now.
'So what happens now?' I asked.
James looked at me, then Jem. Jem smiled. 'Now I ask for your help,' she said.
'I don't know how but you hid this from me for years, what you are I mean, and now you want help? I don't know who you are and I don't trust you, and besides, I'm not a soldier.'
Jem nods her head, 'You're right,' she said, 'I'm sorry for lying to you, but really if I'd told you about any of this would you have believed me? Come on, you would have thought I was insane. Or that I'm having an episode or that I watch too much Syfy.' She looked me in the eyes and said, 'it's still me, babe.'
'I can help,' James said, 'I have a gun.'
'Guns don't work on us,' Jem said, 'our bodies are less dense than bullets, we're more like holograms really.'
'But how is that possible, Jem?' I said, 'I mean, you... we... you know.'
Jem reached out and took my hand, I instinctively pulled back. She frowned and said, 'yeah, I deserve that. look we're tangible. We can hold and feel but when we want to we can also be ghosts.'
James fired again. It went right through her. The three hundred year old German sand blast vase my grandmother gave me for my 30th birthday exploded.
'Can you please stop doing that?' she said.
'Sorry,' he said and put the gun on the table.
'Look, it's hard to explain because you don't have the scientific language for it.'
'Try me,' I said.
'Okay, Okay. You know how your science claims that while you can only sense and use 4 dimensions there are actually 14 dimensions to the world?'
'I didn't know, but whatever.'
'I knew that,' James said. We both looked at him for a moment.
'So anyway,' Jem said, 'we exist in several dimensions at the same time and it allows us to alter density in proportion to quanta spent.'
'What the hell is quanta?' I said.
'It's a unit of measurement of volume.'
'Ah,' I said, 'you're Timelords.'
Jem smiled, 'I guess, if you like.'
'Fezzes are not cool,' James whispered. We both looked at him.
I started picking up the beer cans on the table one by one till I found one that was half full. I drank. 'So, you are a distant relative of Doctor Who which basically means you can do anything and you just happen to spend every Sunday playing Urban Terror with us. Why?'
'You're my best friend,' she said, 'I love you.'
And I looked at her, into her bright blue eyes (tears held back by black black lashes) and she was still my Jem. Always, my Jem.
'Okay,' I said, 'what do you need? want me to get some weapons? do I need special training? what?'
She laughed and launched herself into my arms and I held her as tight and strong as I could until she shrugged. When we came apart James was standing above us so we pulled him down to us and we all hugged again.
'I don't want to die,' James said.
Then I guess we all cried a little and we hugged some more and sometime in the afternoon James went out to get some more beer and we drank it and watched the news holding hands.
And then Seb came back and Jem said she had to go and she explained how we could help her: 'An army needs to be fed,' she said, 'they need three meals a day and field rations. They need people to launder their clothes and change their sheets. They need clean barracks to rest in and people to wake them up.' So I went to the cafe and I pulled up the shift list and I started making calls.
Mina makes an awesome tofu casserole but she's really gonna to chew my ear off when I tell her we're feeding two hundred thousand people.