The two janitors stared at their respective mops, jaws hanging.
Hadrian put his hands to his face. “No, please, Tammy. Stop. No more, I beg you. I can’t go through with this.”
“Of course you can!” Tammy replied. “Now, what do you need your volunteers to do?”
“Yeah!” Collins/Dietrich eagerly demanded. “What do you want us to do? I mean, me and Vlad!”
“And me and Queen Smear!” chimed in Berlant/Halasz.
“Oh, fine. I need you two to join Spark, who will lead you to Engineering, where you are to overpower Chief Engineer Buck DeFrank—he’s not brainwashed, just brain-dead. So, Collins/Dietrich and Berlant/Halasz, you guys immobilize Buck and hold him down. Spark, since Tammy won’t help us here, I want you to employ all appropriate weaponry to blow apart the Main Control Panel and then sever the Transoxyom Phase Coupler at the Insinuator Junction Box, deactivating the Origam Conductor Coils at the Schrödinger Interface Clamp holding the Irridiculum Crystal, thus shutting down the T-Drive. Got all that, Spark?”
“Spark’s got all that, Haddie! Advanced engineering sabotage where one bad move could destroy us all! How exciting!”
“Repeat back my instructions, Spark, just to make sure.”
“All appropriate Collins/Buck hold him down on the Main Control Panel while immobilizing the Schrödinger Phase Conductor at the Coils Box Clamp! Shut down the Transoxyom and bury the Irridiculum Crystal in the back end of Dietrich’s T-Drive!”
“Uh, sure, that’ll probably work just as well. Good.”
“I object to this on the grounds of, well, sanity,” Tammy said.
“Meanwhile,” Hadrian said, ignoring the chicken, “Sweepy, you and your squad will accompany me to the bridge, where we will overpower Prophet Gruk and his minions. I want your weapon settings on Stun at all times.”
“Got it, Captain,” said Sweepy around her cigar. “Just one little thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“We got no ‘Stun’ setting on our weapons. Marine doctrine here, sir. If it’s moving, kill it. If it’s still moving, kill it again. If you think maybe it moved but it might just have been the wind or something, kill it a few more times. If you’re not sure you killed it the first time, kill it again. Anyway, we call all that the Marine Obsessive-Compulsive Locked Door Doctrine. You know, did I lock that fucking door? Better lock it again. Did I—”
“Holy crap! Okay, use unarmed combat to subdue the Prophet and his minions.”
“Subdue, huh? Is that like, just a little bit killed?”
“No! Immobilize them. Pin their limbs, put them in headlocks, armlocks, toe-locks, whatever! Just get them out of the way!”
“We can do that,” Sweepy nodded. “Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. But I should point out, sir, that the best form of immobilizing the enemy is to kill them. Just saying.”
Hadrian turned to Spark. “Okay, Spark, lead ’em out. Down to Engineering, right?”
“Down to Engineering! Immobilize and vandalize!” The robot dog bounded up the corridor, the two janitors with their mops following. As they passed beyond the bend, Vlad the mop laughed and said, “Blood! I vant blood! Muwah!”
Hadrian turned to find the chicken staring at him. “That wasn’t even me,” Tammy said.
Sweepy tossed her cigar butt to the floor and crushed the life from it. She studied the mashed tobacco for a moment, and then crushed it again. Her eyes narrowed. She crushed it—
“Sweepy!”
“Sir?”
“Go collect your squad and meet up with me and Beta and Tammy at the elevator.”
“On it, sir.” With a last lingering look back at the smeared cigar on the floor, she set off.
Tammy went over and kicked at the shredded tobacco and ashes. “Wait till Collins/Dietrich sees this. He’ll go ballistic.”
“Okay, let’s get to the elevator. We’ll use the service corridors only, since only the janitors ever use those. That way, we won’t run into anybody. Let’s go.”
They set out. Round the bend they ran straight into a man. “Shit!” Hadrian swore. “Who the hell are you?”
The man frowned. “I’m Berlant.”
FiFTEEN
In her cell, Betty spun round as the toilet lid suddenly popped open, revealing Molly’s head poking out to look around.
“Ah, Captain! Found you at last!”
Betty hurried over. “What are you doing in my toilet? I just used it for crying out loud!”
“Oh, that’s what that was! Glad I kept my mouth shut, then.” Molly clambered out, shook the water from his hide with a shiver. “The Jacuzzi drain proved the ideal avenue of escape, Captain. The flaw in their thinking, the chink in their armor, the unwittingly provided perfect bolt-hole for—”
“Oh be quiet! So you escaped into my cell! Sheer brilliance! What do you want?”
“But sir! Don’t you see? We can both escape these cells, via the ship’s sewage system!”
“Are you mad? One wrong move and we’ll be going through a heavy-duty fecal-matter-deconstruction unit!”
“A what?”
“A shit strainer!”
“Oh that. No worries. It’s properly labeled and everything, with big warning signs and an emergency override switch.”
Betty frowned at Molly. “Why would the humans … oh, whatever. Okay, so it’s down the toilet for us—with you in the lead, by the way. Then what?”
“Then we make for Engineering, sir! We overpower the crew down there and deactivate the remote override function, then blockade the door—with bodies, presumably—and instigate a self-destruct countdown. Then we patch through to the bridge and demand everyone’s surrender, or we’ll blow up the entire ship!”
“But if we blow up the entire ship, we’ll be dead, too! That’s idiotic!”
“Bah! They’ll cave in, sir. Besides, we’ll preset a lockdown on the counter, say at five seconds. They won’t know that, of course, and as everyone knows, when there’s only five seconds left before everything goes kapowy, the only possible thing you can reasonably do is duck, put your fingers in your ears, and squeeze shut your eyes.”
“Oh really?” Betty crossed his arms. “I happen to know that five seconds is more than enough time to a) crack an encrypted code from scratch, b) pull out all sixteen wires in the proper order, c) deactivate the atomic clock and reset it to Eternity, d) emergency displace the entire engineering room into space—”
“Okay okay, two point two seconds, then!”
“Mhmm, that might do. Unless there’s a red wire and a green wire! Which one to cut? Oh my oh dear oh what the hell, the red one!”
Molly gasped. “You never cut the red one! Everyone knows that! It’s too obvious!”
“So the green one then. Point is, two point two seconds is enough time to cut a damned wire, isn’t it? No, I think the preset should be at point five seconds.”
“But what if it doesn’t work?”
“What do you mean ‘what if it doesn’t work’? It’s a preset. Of course it’ll work.”
“But what if it doesn’t?”
“Okay, we do it this way, idiot. We just tell them we’ve rigged everything to blow. Then we just let the timer do whatever it wants and it won’t make any difference.”
Molly scratched his head, tugged a few times at his rhinestone flea collar, and then nodded. “Okay. Done. We lie through our teeth.”
“Exactly. Now then.” Betty gestured at the toilet. “Dive in. I’ll be right behind you.”
Molly ran over to the toilet and climbed into the bowl, took a deep breath, and began squirming down.
Betty walked up and hit the flush button. Molly vanished with a sharp sucking sound. Betty set the lid back down and resumed pacing. “Follow a plan devised by a minion? Ridiculous! Not a chance! I’m staying right here, my brain working overtime to come up with a scheme to take over the entire ship. And I think I’ve got one! All I need is a way to get out of this damned cell! Come on! Employ your evil
genius, Betty! Think! Connive!” Suddenly he swung round and stared at the toilet. “I’ve got it!”
* * *
“Prophet Gruk, we are approaching the Unknown Barrier.”
“Excellent, Sister Sin-Dour. Sister Sticks, take us across the Threshold of the Unknown into the Unknown Beyond.”
“Yes beloved, like, Prophet guy.”
“Oh, let’s indulge ourselves for a few moments, shall we?” Gruk said from the captain’s chair. “Main Viewer, nix the kitten pics and show us the Unknown Barrier.”
“Prophet sir,” Sticks said, twisting round.
“Yes, Sister Sticks?”
“Uhm, like, the main viewer isn’t a person. You like can’t order it around or anything. But hey look, I’ve got this switch here, so I can use that to change the scene on the main viewer. Like … this! Right? Ooh look, space!”
“Not just space,” Forlich said, stepping away from the science station. “Space that’s … unknown! Prophet! Just look at it! It looks like … it looks like … I don’t know what it looks like. I’m at a complete loss. It’s … space!”
“Well,” ventured Eden, “I see stars and stuff.”
“Foolish man!” Gruk said. “But I forgive you, Brother Eden.” He stood, eyes on the main viewer. “Stars? Well, of course they look like stars. But wait! They’re beyond the Unknown Barrier, deep in the Realm of the Unknown. Are they really stars? We just don’t know, do we? No, we haven’t a clue.” He raised a finger. “From now on, all assumptions must be discarded, tossed away, dismissed, sneered at even. Stars? No! The million glittering eyes of God!”
Sticks gasped. “God’s an insect?”
“An insect, a shrew, the slime mold you find under toilet seats, a—”
A booming voice interrupted him. “HANG ON A MINUTE! SLIME MOLD? WHAT THE HELL’S WRONG WITH YOU?”
“Sir!” cried Eden. “I have God on line four!”
“Prophet!” said Sister Sin-Dour. “Look! A planet directly ahead!”
“But do we really know it’s a—”
“FOR CRYING OUT LOUD OF COURSE IT’S A PLANET! I MADE IT JUST FOR YOU. BRING YOUR PUNY LITTLE SHIP (WHICH WOULD LOOK PERFECT IN MY GARAGE BY THE WAY) CLOSER. ASSUME ORBIT. DISPLACE DOWN AND MEET ME, GOD, THE BEARDED GUY, ME. HURRY UP, I CAN’T STAND WAITING!”
Gruk lifted his arms. “Brothers and sisters! We’re finally here! Let us now displace down to the Chosen Planet and receive our blessed blessing from God Himself—no, not all of you, of course. Let’s see, there’ll be me and Sister Sin-Dour and Sister Sticks and Sister Lorrin Tighe and … well, that’s it, actually.”
Forlich stepped forward. “But Prophet! You’ve only chosen very attractive women. What about us?”
“What about you? Get your own damned paradise.” Gruk gestured at the planet. “I’ve got mine right here.”
“But we followed you all this way, did everything you asked of us. We betrayed the Affiliation, brainwashed this crew, stole this vessel, washed your feet, washed your ears and behind them, too. Combed your hair, polished your shoes, did your laundry—”
“Servants of the Prophet must abase themselves with such humble pursuits, Brother Forlich, as I’ve already told you. Now, while we prepare to displace down to that planet, there’s just time for a quick cappuccino. Get to it, Forlich. Don’t keep me waiting.”
“Yes, Prophet. But I can’t help thinking something’s not quite right here—”
“Cease that seditious talk! Abase yourself at that espresso machine immediately!”
Forlich scrambled.
Birk and Morony made a note in their notepads, exchanged a look, and shook their heads.
* * *
Buck DeFrank was alone in Engineering, which made it just about spacious enough to keep down his heart palpitations and incipient claustrophobic panic. He sat at the console station, feet up, leafing through the latest copy of Quantum Digest (Extended Version), the pages of which remained blank unless you looked at them, and wasn’t that a clever bit of pointless engineering?
Page Three activated a holovid projection of Miss Engineering October, who cooed at him and said, “See this bra I’m wearing? Are there breasts inside? You’ll never know unless you take off my bra! Go on, big boy!” Oh those Quantum guys!
Buck leaned forward and reached up—
The door to Engineering slid open and two mops whacked Buck in the head, slamming him to the floor. A moment later two heavy bodies fell on him, pinning his arms and legs down. Buck thrashed. “Damn you!” he snarled. “Now I’ll never see what was behind that bra!” Then he stiffened. “If there was anything behind them at all! Damn those Quantum bastards!”
Spark’s mangled metal dog face loomed into view. “Chief Engineer Immobilized? Scanning … comparing with archived files ‘IMMOBILIZE PRIOR TO BURYING.’ Hmmm. Immobilization confirmed within acceptable parameters. Minor Units Custodian One and Custodian Two, maintain immobilization until instructed otherwise.”
“Hear that?” one of the custodians said.
“Yeah!” the other snapped. “Minor units! Fuck me!”
“Not that! We’re ‘custodians’!”
“Darwin! The robot’s right! We’re not janitors at all! We need to petition the Union for a pay raise! Wow, custodians!”
Spark hopped up into the chair in front of the Main Control Panel. “Now! Phase Two for Spark! Activate weaponry to blow apart the Buck Control Coupler and then sever the Transorigam Oxyometer inside the Dietrich Coupler Box beneath the Phase Junction at the Coil Insinuator, deactivating the Inter-Schrödinger Face-Clamp Crystal holding the Irridiculum T-deactivating. Now proceeding—”
“Not so fast!” snarled a voice from the doorway.
Spark turned. “Klang Intruder! Red alert! Klangklangklangklang!”
“Stop that!” snapped Molly. “See this weapon in my hands? One false move and you’re nothing but atoms!”
Spark tilted its head. “Confusion! Spark already is nothing but atoms! So is Klang Intruder! So is Custodian One and Custodian Two and—”
“That’s not what I meant! The point is, I’m armed with a barely functioning Glack Baconator Mark II which I found on the other side of the shit strainer—”
“Damn!” groaned Buck from where he was lying on the floor. “So that’s where it went! But how was I to know? It’s not like I haven’t had mondo dumps before, clogging everything up and needing to use the Flush Override. Idiot Buck—never ever carry a weapon in that pocket, you twit!”
Molly sauntered in, waving the weapon. “You, robot dog, move away from that Main Control Panel. I need to rig it to explode linked to a timer, but first I need to override the override of the override overrider, thus preventing any, uh, override from the bridge. And then I need to set the timer for two point two seconds’ lockdown—”
“Not so fast!” cried another voice from the doorway, and in stepped Betty. “You will set that lockdown at point five seconds, Molly! That’s right, this is my takeover of your takeover plan! And look, oh, what’s this in my hands? That’s right, a Masticulating Fanganator Mark VIII!”
“Oh crap,” moaned Collins/Dietrich. “That’s where that went!”
Berlant/Halasz shook his head. “What’s with these damned toilets anyway—”
“Yes!” crowed Betty. “And it works perfectly! Which I proved killing all those alligators and pythons and boa constrictors and, uh, kittens—and really, humans, you’re such creeps, you know? Unspayed pets get pregnant! Shock! How did that happen? Duh! Fuck me, get a brain willya?”
“Don’t fret,” said Molly. “Karma’s gonna chew their asses real good, Captain. Okay, point five seconds it is. I was wondering where you’d got to, you know.”
“I concluded that your scheme was horribly flawed,” explained Betty. “Instead, I devised my own genius escape from my cell.”
“Down the toilet?” Molly asked.
“That’s right!”
“So, just like my plan.”
“Wrong!
Mine was much better! Now, get on with all that self-destruct stuff, will you? We have a starship to steal. Oh, and about that self-destruct thing, see me, Molly? See my eye doing this?” Wink wink. “See that, Molly?”
Molly stared for a moment, and then sighed.
* * *
With the entire crew dispersed in their private quarters watching porn and cat and kitten vids and pics, the corridors were empty as Hadrian led Beta, Berlant, Tammy, and Sweepy and her squad of marines toward the bridge.
Hadrian shook his head. “I can’t believe something as stupid as porn and cat pics could brainwash eight hundred and thirty-three highly trained Affiliation officers and enlisted personnel.”
“Hmm,” said Tammy, “and once more your naive optimism regarding the human species reveals its hopeless disconnect with reality. While it was well-established that prior to the Great EM Pulse following the Benefactors’ arrival in Earth orbit, virtually every human being on the planet had already become a drooling automaton with bloodshot eyes glued to a pixelated screen, even as the world melted around them in a toxic stew of air pollution, water pollution, vehicles pouring out carcinogenic waste gases, and leaking gas pipelines springing up everywhere along with earthquake-inducing fracking and oil spills in the oceans and landslides due to deforestation and heat waves due to global warming and ice caps melting and islands and coastlines drowning and forests dying and idiots building giant walls and—”
“All right, whatever!” Hadrian snapped. “But don’t you see? This is the future!”
“Yeah that statement makes sense.”
“The future from then, I mean. Now is their future, even if it’s our now, or will be, I mean—oh fuck it. The point is, Tammy, we’re supposed to have matured as a species, as a civilization. We’re supposed to have united globally in a warm gush of integrity, ethical comportment, and peace and love as our next stage of universal consciousness bursts forth like a blinding light to engulf us all in a golden age of enlightenment and postscarcity well-being.”
“Hahahaha,” Tammy laughed and then coughed and choked. “Stop! You’re killing me!”
Beta spoke. “I am attempting to compute said golden age, Captain. Alas, my Eternally Needful Consumer Index is redlining and descending into a cursive loop of existential panic. All efforts to reset parameters yield the Bluescreen of Incomprehension. Life without mindless purchase? Without pointless want? Without ephemeral endorphin spurts? Without gaming-induced frontal lobe permanent degradation resulting in short-tempered antisocial short-attention-span psychological generational profiles? Impossible.”
The Search for Spark Page 20